The great accomplishment of Jobs's life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies - his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness - in the service of perfection.

When people reflexively write checks to institutions that have billions of dollars in the bank, they are essentially committing a moral crime. Your money could do good in this world and you're choosing instead to waste it. People have to do a better job of that. You've got to find places where your money's going to do some good and direct your dollars towards that institution.

The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up.

The answer is that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.

We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.

Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.

There are some people, who I'll charitably call snobs, who are dismissive of any conversation that doesn't begin with the full level of complexity. That's just not how the world works.